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Microsoft Announces Project Mu, an Open-Source Release of the UEFI Core (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: Microsoft has a new open source project -- Project Mu. This is the company's open-source release of the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) core which is currently used by Surface devices and Hyper-V. With the project, Microsoft hopes to make it easier to build scalable and serviceable firmware, and it embraces the idea of Firmware as a Service (FaaS). This allows for fast and efficient updating of firmware after release, with both security patches and performance-enhancing updates.
FaaS is something that Microsoft has already enabled on Surface, but the company realized that TianoCore -- the existing open-source implementation of UEFI -- was not optimized for rapid servicing. This is where Project Mu can help, the company says. "Mu is built around the idea that shipping and maintaining a UEFI product is an ongoing collaboration between numerous partners. For too long the industry has built products using a 'forking' model combined with copy/paste/rename and with each new product the maintenance burden grows to such a level that updates are near impossible due to cost and risk," the company said.
FaaS is something that Microsoft has already enabled on Surface, but the company realized that TianoCore -- the existing open-source implementation of UEFI -- was not optimized for rapid servicing. This is where Project Mu can help, the company says. "Mu is built around the idea that shipping and maintaining a UEFI product is an ongoing collaboration between numerous partners. For too long the industry has built products using a 'forking' model combined with copy/paste/rename and with each new product the maintenance burden grows to such a level that updates are near impossible due to cost and risk," the company said.
Other than the wave of fancy graphics found on computer set-up screens, UEFI, has brought little to the table. As someone who has assembled over one-hundred computer, I think that the old BIOS, being a very minimal, compact, low-bug, text-based setup software was a idea better suited to reliable computers than "modern" bloated, bug-filled, UEFI.
Monopoly-wise, UEFI, has given Microsoft and unfair advantage to draw a circle around all (IBM Compatible) PCs and call them their own.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Open Source isn't as free as most people think it is.
Free and Open Specifications have far more value then Source Code does.
And No Open Source doesn't mean the specifications are Open automatically, There is a lot of ways to hide stuff in source code that would make comprehending the logic far more complex then just a normal reverse engineering of it. There is also a lot of system particular calls which may be the case as well.
For example a lot of old Legacy Applications will save data files by just dumping the memory structure into the file in raw binary format. I can take this code it will compile and work on a different platform but wouldn't be able to read the data files, Because how the system handled memory was different (such a using Big Endian vs Little Endian which is more common today) or just how an integer may be classified 16bit, 32bit, 64bit....
Open Source alone doesn't make it free or open. It just gives you the source code, which you may be able to alter some features without having to do a full rewrite.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
UEFI is a replacement for the "beloved" BIOS, that's there in firmware, before your system boots.
It's been on *EVERY* workstation and server for years.
M$ tried to lock in Windows by making "secure boot" with UEFI... and only they had the cryptographic signing that was accepted. That didn't fly very long....
And for anyone who thinks "firmware as a service" is a good idea, instead of running away screaming, here, let me hijack your system, and install my own firmware on your system....